The crazy part of it is that Russia and China have spent the last forty years rebuilding their economies and a better life for their peoples, which is exactly what we should be doing here in the West. Instead we exhaust ourselves waging wars. We talk about weakening and China and Russia with no regard for how we are destroying ourselves.
It is obvious Russia was well prepared for conflict in Ukraine. NATO has disgraced itself in how it has conducted itself, so badly, its performance has been genocidal for Ukraine.
Scott Ritter has reported that war against China is off the table it has been "war gamed" and the USA loses every time. Even so we will have to live with the brinkmanship of war until the US exhausts itself or does something really, really, moronic.
In the mean time our pathetic elites are showing us how the geopolitics of spite, envy and imbecilic stupidity is practiced.
One of the surprises (for me) coming out of the horror of this still continuing Ukraine war, has been just how poorly NATO and the West military doctrine and equipment have faired against Russia. For all the trillions spent on the US military over the decades - it has been an eye opener to see how the NATO system primarily built on lucrative independent contracts for war corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, etc - that have led to huge profits for these corporations (and Wallstreet) - how disastrously the actual use and reality of their US/NATO military equipment and even military doctrine has performed against the Russian military doctrine and organization. We have seen the ascendency of sophisticated integrated missile/air defence systems and rapid military industrial deployment become a decisive and horrific brutality upon the Ukrainian battlefield. While the West has been left with a war of lies and propaganda, while shielding a senile American POTUS from all criticism from the vast amount of blood and destruction - that the warpigs and Neocons still running the show in DC - have not lifted a single finger to stop. Nor have the progressives or democrats - hell, Bernie Sanders is all in for more bloodshed - in the name of Ukrainian freedom.
Some freedom. 100s of thousands of Ukrainians have now been slaughtered in a war the deep state and Washington DC knew some time ago could not be won. A war that was indeed provoked by the Neocon fanatics who still are at the helm of US hegemony - in suicidal control - pushing toward nuclear escalation.
But all of this abstract analysis of military capability - pales in comparison to the number of human lives taken and destroyed. And the horror that no political leaders in the West have yet to speak up against the ongoing human obscenity of this war, and bring this continuing mass murder to some kind of conclusion. I am filled with rage - enough rage where my faith in the human race and human life is at an all time low.
Well said and recently we'll sung by the country musician Oliver Anthony in his song Rich Men North of Richmond. It came out on YouTube early last week and by the end of the week he's world famous. Next week it'll be sung in karaoke bars nationwide. Maybe the following week it starts a revolution.
Politicians are making the song their own on the Left and the right saying they have the solutions. THEY ARE THE RICH NORTH OF RICHMOND! They are trying to use the song to keep us divided hence conquered in service to their Oligarch Masters our Rulers who fear our unity. They fear us so much they have their private armies to protect them from us. They fear the nooses, firing squads and guillotines of revolution.
It isn't like the poor have other options. I think TV shows like "The Wire" and even "Justified" show the cause of the conditions quite well.
When you've been beaten into the gutter with no chance to crawl out, then what? You can be really smart, but still unable to break out. I'm pretty sure that but for a 10 second chance, I might be in that "poor group" rather than traveling the world.
"Lack of Pity" is just a more socially acceptable way of describing "Hate". TBH, it sounds quite racist to me.
I'm not claiming to have solutions, but when the rich take all the income and control all the wealth, what's left?
I don't get those who seem to believe that Bezos, and those like him, is a "great businessman". He's an immoral cad that uses the system to prey upon the weak and helpless.
I really don't understand why when I point this fact out, some people get so angry that I have to mollify them and never talk about it again. They claim I'm subscribing to conspiracy theories. Well, look at the results. How is that a conspiracy? Why is this acceptable. Is it a conspiracy to point out what Caitlin talks about here?
Damn, you make excellent points and I can't disagree with any. The rich are so because of Patrimonial Capitalism and capitalizing from the labor of wage slaves. You don't get rich working for yourself. You get rich having others work for you. A lady I knew who owned a Soul Food restaurant had a sign on the wall that said, "Why work for the Man 8 hours a day when you can work for yourself for 24.".
It isn’t actually rebuilding—it’s strip mining while we pay off the thugs we need to keep their population in line. None of the money we send gets to anybody who needs it. It goes to the Zelenskies of the World. And, I forgot to say, to our military contractors.
I am not sure we can make a comment that any nation, China, US , Russia, is actually trying to better the lives of their citizens. That is a stretch. Sure, some are much worse than others in some metrics, ( particularly the USA) but none deserve credit for being "pro- commoner ". All have their own power elite and it is their desires that get fulfilled.
Of course Russia was well prepared, it was telegraphed for years and even a novice tactician could tell the Minsk agreements were to buy time for a shift in the battlespace. You said that NATO has disgraced itself, when hasn't NATO disgraced itself? It is a disgraceful organization, it should not exist. It has never been an altruistic righteous organization looking to foment peace. It is merely another branch of the Global American Empire ( GAE) that helps promulgate managerial terrorism.
NATO knew from their own war game scenarios they were never going to control the battles space in Ukraine, and they knew the "counter offensive" would fail as well, but they pushed the narrative that victory was certain all the while more bodies piled up. ( I am saddened by all loss of life,, Russian and Ukrainian. It is senseless) Whatever the end goal is, it is sociopathic and should not be evaluated for "military performance " as they do not have the same goals most are measuring them by. Killing a bunch of lower class people with tons of ammunition which will need resupplied in an area that is problematic for a geopolitical "foe" , while making bank for the elites, is a very probable goal. Of course I do not know this for sure because I do not sit on the CFR and have that type of clearance. I create my own educated opinions based upon the best available knowledge.
"Scott Ritter has reported that war against China is off the table it has been "war gamed" and the USA loses every time."
This part gives me concerns, particularly with Ritter's motivations. War with China is not of the table,, rather, it is very much being glued to the table. At least for the common narrative. There have been war game scenarios that show China winning, but they were sponsored by the MIC, so there was an implicit bias to show the US machine needs more..
In reality, the United States has a decisive military advantage over China using conventional warfare including newer forms of 5th generation warfare and Netwar . Clearly if WMDs are used the game changes. However, I have seen those war game scenarios where China wins a conventional war and in all of them the scenario severely handicapped the US War machine. However, I am making the assumption that the goal would be to win the war, just like it is assumed in the scenarios, but as seen over the past few decades "winning" a war has not been the goal.. rather sustaining one was the goal .
So, if it did occur and was without WMD'S, It would be an ugly war and while completely unnecessary, if waged to win, the US would cause China to submit relatively quickly. With tremendous loss on both sides.. If it were not fought to win and it turned into a war of attrition, China would grind the US down IMO. But again, it is wholly unnecessary.
However, I do not know the actual hositiites between these countries, it all could be a ruse. We are lied to all the time about everything. With that being said, Ritter's comments about the gaming scenarios smell funny and I do not know what to make of them.
With all of that being said, I think everyone should pay extra attention to Africa. To a degree,there is a good chance global war is already very much in progress, it just isn't kinetic yet. ( 5th and 6th generation warfare) Niger and ECOWAS is getting hot and it is very convoluted with all the major players poking around. I am not sure what the end game is, nor can I tell without access to classified intel ( nobody can because we all live in national security states) but what is clear, the largest player on the board does not want peace. ( GAE)
Lastly :
"We talk about weakening and China and Russia with no regard for how we are destroying ourselves"
What are we destroying brother? The constitutional republic has been dead for over a century. We live in a technocratic national security surveillance state. Elections are kayfab. It is a managed democracy, inverted totalitarianism. They own the banks. The schools. The economy. Your life as a citizen. ( do something without permissions, see what happens. ) The idea that we are destroying ourselves implies something is left. It is all gone except for the Spectacle.
Sure the economy can crash and our standard of living goes down, but that is because it has been built on a house of cards. It needs to come down for any of us, from America to Australia, to crawl our from underneath the boot.
Agree for the most part on the last pph. This CBDC digital$ development may begin as soon as September 20th, (with FedCoin coming in,hopefully voluntary until cash is canceled). The Bill'schip is the most insane, yet could be mandated for traveling about/getting into school or offices or concerts and planes). Unless we have our own currency, they have our hide. I can't see barter working well, myself.
It was good advice in World War II, and was demonstrated as fact in both Korea and Vietnam. Come to think of it, it also applies to Afghanistan and Iraq. They are in Asia, after all.
Besides, China makes most of our stuff. They could strangle our economy in a week. Talk of war with them is...I'll be nice and say irrational.
So True, Truman fired Gen MacArthur for trying to start a war with China. After WW ll there were lunatic US generals who wanted to nuke both Russia and China. Truman always said "the buck stops here" but approved the gratuitous bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The crazy part of it is that Russia and China have spent the last forty years rebuilding their economies and a better life for their peoples"
Nah, that's romanticized bullshit.
To begin with, it's comparatively easy for an economy to put up huge GDP increases when it begins from a condition of massive underdevelopment. Whereas the US is so developed that many Americans already own more Stuff than they can use. Which is not to say that inequality isn't a serious problem. Debt-financed consumerism has become a substitute for wages being too low and the rent being too damn high, which sometimes leaves even Americans with six-figure incomes in a state of Precarity.
But by and large, the problems of the US are 1st World problems. There's no present-day analogy in the US to 20th century developing world situations of entire cities of people making a living by burning the plastic insulation off of electrical wires in open fires built in oil drums set on the streets in front of their homes in order to get at the copper, with the residue polluting their well water. That's a Chinese industrial practice. The people who live in those towns don't like it. But it's a living. Their doctors- who also live there, and breathe the air and the particulates in the soil, and drink the well water- don't like it either. Some of the Chinese are laying the groundwork for improving it. They don't have a magic wand. In the meantime, that pollution and toxic waste is the material reality of the industry.
Both Russia and China have huge corruption problems in their industrial sector. Russia more than China. At least some Chinese had centuries of experience as a merchant economy; they had the basics down, as far as knowing that there's more to capitalist economy than just bribery, looting, nepotism, and plunder. Most Chinese were peasants, but there was executive aptitude present in the business owners.
Whereas the Russians started out as either peasants or Marxist theoreticians. Neither background works to build business enterprises. Many Russians are well-educated and technically skilled, but it's all wasted if the bosses are just out and out gangsters with no legit skills. Putin has tried to improve this- he has improved it, compared to the plutocratic anarchy that he inherited. But he's also embedded in the same corrupt system.
The difference also explains why there's so much foreign investment in Chinese businesses, whereas foreign investment is either restricted, forbidden, unwelcome, or just plain foolish in Russian businesses.
What's happening with China is a weird situation that I don't pretend to fully comprehend. I only know a few facts- one of which is that China and the US are economically interdependent. They host much of our consumer goods manufacturing, and even some strategic manufacturing, like some of our military quartermastery. US businesses and consumers are among their biggest buyers. We pay the PRC government annual interest on the nearly $1 trillion USD in T-bills they hold. It would take years- even decades- to untangle that situation. So how are we gonna have a war? An increase in military budgets, on the other hand...
The last time imperialist, world domination obsessed China sent toops into combat was 1979. Compare the track record of the humble and peace loving United States since that time.
And lest someone dutifully bleat "but Muh Uighurs!" nobody gave a shit until the United decided that China wasn't meekly taking orders.
The CIA- funded Uighurs? Those Uighurs? What kind of moron at the State Dept thought it was a good idea to go the Uighur route? I know the Odious Ass-kiss of Evil David Frum was involved. Odious has become part of his name now, like Mean in Joe Greene or L’il for Nasty.
When whites came to N/A there were 50-100 million Natives. Now? `~ 2 million in the 2010 census. Sure some was disease transmission but even some of that was purposeful, see Jeffrey Amherst who gave the natives smallpox infected blankets to exterminate “that execrable race” and “that vermin”.
Meanwhile the Uighurs, exempted from the one-child policy have seen their numbers soar 3x as fast as the Han. Some genocide. There has been no BSer in world history to hold a candle to Frum et al.
“Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”
The wholesale willful slaughter of approximately 30 million buffalo destroyed the Plains Indians way of life and their almost total disappearance. Multiple tribes and tens of thousands of the people. The buffalo was the indigenous’ source of food, clothing, shelter, tools, medicine for thousands of years.
It is reported that Europeans killed at least 37 million natives in all of the Americas within one century.
It's obvious you've never lived on a Native American reservation. You probably wouldn't even understand the term "food desert" too. Or "Carlisle Schools" where thousands of children were taken away from their parents and forced to speak only English and to forget their culture (and where many died due to disease, poor nutrition, physical and psychological abuse, and sometimes just lack of clothing in cold weather). Some of us have ancestors who lived on reservations and were forced into the Carlisle Schools. White Americans are so blissfully ignorant of the true genocide--and it shows in comments like this.
The genocide of indian tribes south of the border was no laughing matter either.
In Argentina (who prides itself for having no indians) a systematic murder of all Indians in Patagonia was launched in the 1880's under president Julio Roca called the campaign of the desert. Tens of thousands of indians were driven away from their homeland and settled in inhospitable lands near the Andes. Thousands were killed in the process and those that survived were separated by sex so they would not be able to procreate. The last Tehuelche chief was put on display in a museum in Buenos Aires so the public could go see a "live indian". So perished the indian nation.
The Revolutionary War or the War of Independence to break away from England was in large part because the colonists wanted to continue the West expansion and in doing so to displace and kill the indigenous and take the lands, and also the colonists wanted to continue the right to enslave peoples, both going against denunciation of those acts by England. It certainly wasn’t simply the tax on tea. Your concept that indigenous peoples were happy and content on reservations and their deaths were mostly of their own doing is a wild distortion of truth. And I suspect you believe that God and Jesus were on the side of the murderers, and most wrongs were just missteps for the greater good. Sociopathic thinking.
My point was what happened to the Natives. There was no “US” then. Just people lying stealing and murdering the Natives. You’re surely wrong about Amherst. Indeed his correspondence survives and from which I quoted.
Ah yes, those Natives were vicious, as one might be when your people are murdered, your land is stolen and you are lied to serially.
You desperately need to visit Yale’s Avalon Project and read the treaties whites broke- every one, often before the ink was dry.
I was confused by your reply so I searched the thread and now I understand. Forgive my screwup with Homeland Security. I didn't notice until your comment showed up in my email.
Read The Seven States Of California, by Philip Fradkin. California played host to some of the largest massacres of noncombatants and instances of ethnic removal and eradication of non-Europeans in the history of North America.
Your comments about disease inadvertently spread by Europeans being responsible for most of the deaths in the North American tribes are more or less accurate; I've been jumped on for making many of the same truthful observations in my previous comments. The rest of your narrative is rife with inaccuracies, and inexcusably exculpatory of the European settlers at the expense of the indigenous tribes, who lost not only their lands but their lifeways, and often their language.
Kicking people when they're down and sneering at their misfortunes is the sort of thing that gives European settlers a bad name. I wish it was entirely undeserved. You've just shown that it isn't.
Of course it would be news to you that they starved on reservations. Ignorance is not a ringing endorsement fir your infomercial that White people were not that bad. But it’s good of you to show your ignorance and privilege so clearly.
"But there was some murdering and raping for sure, even here in California, and there was a massacre or two here also..."
19th century settlement of California, List of recorded massacres:
Year Date Name Current location Description Reported casualties References
1846 April 6 Sacramento River massacre Sacramento River in Shasta County, Northern California Captain John C. Frémont's men attacked a band of Indians (probably Wintun) on the Sacramento River in California, killing between 120 and 200 Indians. 120–200 [60]
1846 June Sutter Buttes massacre Sutter Buttes in Sutter County, Northern California Captain John C. Frémont's men attacked a rancheria on the banks of the Sacramento River near Sutter Buttes, killing several Patwin people. 14+ [61]
1846 December Pauma massacre Pauma Valley in San Diego County, Southern California 11 Californios captured at Rancho Pauma were killed as horse thieves by Indians at Warner Springs, California, leading to the Temecula massacre. 11 (settlers) [62]
1846 December Temecula massacre Temecula in Riverside County, Southern California 33 to 40 Luiseño Indians killed in an ambush in revenge for the Pauma Massacre east of Temecula, California. 33–40 [62]
1847 March Rancheria Tulea massacre Napa Valley in Napa County, Northern California White slavers retaliate to a slave escape by massacring five Indians in Rancheria Tulea. 5 [61]
1847 March 29 Kern and Sutter massacres Mill Creek in Tehama County, Northern California In response to a plea from White settlers to put an end to raids, U.S. Army Captain Edward Kern and rancher John Sutter led 50 men in attacks on three Indian villages. 20 [61]
1847 late June/early July Konkow Maidu slaver massacre Chico in Butte County, Northern California Slavers kill 12–20 Konkow Maidu Indians in the process of capturing 30 members of the tribe for the purpose of forced slavery. 12–20 [61]
1850 May 15 Bloody Island massacre Clear Lake in Lake County, Northern California Nathaniel Lyon and his U.S. Army detachment of cavalry killed 60–100 Pomo people on Bo-no-po-ti island near Clear Lake, (Lake Co., California); they believed the Pomo had killed two Clear Lake settlers who had been abusing and murdering Pomo people. (The Island Pomo had no connections to the enslaved Pomo.) This incident led to a general outbreak of settler attacks against and mass killing of native people all over Northern California. The site is now California Registered Historical Landmark #427. 60–100 [63][64][65]
1851 January 11 Mariposa War Various sites in Mariposa County, Northern California The gold rush increased pressure on the Native Americans of California, because miners forced Native Americans off their gold-rich lands. Many were pressed into service in the mines; others had their villages raided by the army and volunteer militia. Some Native American tribes fought back, beginning with the Ahwahnechees and the Chowchilla in the Sierra Nevada and San Joaquin Valley leading a raid on the Fresno River post of James D. Savage, in December 1850. In retaliation Mariposa County Sheriff James Burney led local militia in an indecisive clash with the natives on January 11, 1851, on a mountainside near present-day Oakhurst, California. 40+
1851 Old Shasta Town Massacre Shasta in Shasta County, Northern California Miners killed 300 Wintu Indians near Old Shasta, California and burned down their tribal council meeting house. 300 [66]
1852 April 23 Bridge Gulch massacre Hayfork Creek in Trinity County, Northern California 70 American men led by Trinity County sheriff William H. Dixon killed more than 150 Wintu people in the Hayfork Valley of California, in retaliation for the killing of Col. John Anderson.150 [67]
1853 Howonquet massacre Smith River in Del Norte County, Northern California Californian settlers attacked and burned the Tolowa village of Howonquet, massacring 70 people. 70 [68]
1853 Yontoket Massacre Yontocket in Del Norte County, Northern California A posse of settlers attacked and burned a Tolowa rancheria at Yontocket, California, killing 450 Tolowa during a prayer ceremony. 450 [69][70]
1853 Achulet Massacre Lake Earl in Del Norte County, Northern California White settlers launched an attack on a Tolowa village near Lake Earl in California, killing between 65 and 150 Indians at dawn. 65–150 [71]
1853 Before December 31 "Ox" incident Visalia in Tulare County, Central Valley U.S. forces attacked and killed an unreported number of Indians in the Four Creeks area (Tulare County, California) in what was referred to by officers as "our little difficulty" and "the chastisement they have received". [72]
1855 January 22 Klamath River massacres Klamath River in Del Norte County, Northern California In retaliation for the murder of six settlers and the theft of some cattle, whites commenced a "war of extermination against the Indians" in Humboldt County, California. [73]
1856 March Shingletown Shingleton in Shasta County, Northern California In reprisal for Indian stock theft, white settlers massacred at least 20 Yana men, women, and children near Shingletown, California. 20 [74]
1856–1859 Round Valley Settler Massacres Round Valley in Mendocino County, Northern California White settlers killed over a thousand Yuki Indians in Round Valley over the course of three years in an uncountable number of separate massacres. 1,000+ [75][76]
1859–1860 Mendocino War Various sites in Mendocino County, Northern California White settlers calling themselves the "Eel River Rangers", led by Walter Jarboe, killed at least 283 Indian men and countless women and children in 23 engagements over the course of six months. They were reimbursed by the U.S. government for their campaign. 283+ [75]
1859 September Pit River Pit River in Northern California White settlers massacred 70 Achomawi Indians (10 men and 60 women and children) in their village on the Pit River in California. 70 [77]
1859 Chico Creek Big Chico Creek in Butte County, Northern California White settlers attacked a Maidu camp near Chico Creek in California, killing indiscriminately 40 Indians. 40 [78]
1860 Exact date unknown Massacre at Bloody Rock Mendocino National Forest in Mendocino County, Northern California A group of 65 Yuki Indians were surrounded and massacred by white settlers at Bloody Rock, in Mendocino County, California. 65
1860 February 26 1860 Wiyot massacre Tuluwat Island in Humboldt County, Northern California In three nearly simultaneous assaults on the Wiyot, at Indian Island, Eureka, Rio Dell, and near Hydesville, California, white settlers killed between 80 and 250 Wiyot in Humboldt County, California. Victims were mostly women, children, and elders, as reported by Bret Harte at Arcata newspaper. Other villages were massacred within two days. The main site is National Register of Historic Places in the United States #66000208. 80–250 [79][80][81][82]
1863 April 19 Keyesville massacre Keyesville in Kern County, Central Valley American militia and members of the California Volunteers cavalry killed 35 Tübatulabal men in Kern County, California. 35 [83]
1863 August 28 Konkow Trail of Tears Chico in Butte County to Covelo in Mendocino County, Northern California In August 1863 all Konkow Maidu were to be sent to the Bidwell Ranch in Chico and then be taken to the Round Valley Reservation at Covelo in Mendocino County. Any Indians remaining in the area were to be shot. Maidu were rounded up and marched under guard west out of the Sacramento Valley and through to the Coastal Range. 461 Native Americans started the trek, 277 finished.[84] They reached the Round Valley on September 18, 1863. 184 [84]
1864 Oak Run massacre Oak Run in Shasta County, Northern California California settlers massacred 300 Yana Indians who had gathered near the head of Oak Run, California, for a spiritual ceremony. 300 [85]
1865 Owens Lake massacre Owens Lake in Inyo County, Northern California To avenge the killing of a woman and child at Haiwai Meadows, White vigilantes attacked a Paiute camp on Owens Lake in California, killing about 40 men, women, and children. 40 [86]
1865 Three Knolls massacre Mill Creek in Tehama County, Northern California White settlers massacred a Yana community at Three Knolls on the Mill Creek, California. [87]
1868 Campo Seco Mill Creek in Tehama County, Northern California A posse of white settlers massacred 33 Yahis in a cave north of Mill Creek, California. 33 [88][89]
1871 Kingsley Cave massacre Ishi Wilderness in Tehama County, Northern California 4 settlers killed 30 Yahi Indians in Tehama County, California about two miles from Wild Horse Corral in the Ishi Wilderness. It is estimated that this massacre left only 15 members of the Yahi tribe alive.
The Uighurs were radicalized against China in Afghanistan, just like other Muslims, and conditioned to see the West as their saviours. China's socialist bent was the selling point: socialism was the enemy of godliness. And they wanted to be godly...and... free...like...us.
But most Muslims changed their mind about that, and turned on us, when they couldn't use us in common causes. Who knew? It's just all a game, a "great" game.
The US created Islamophobia. The vile tactics of empire weaponised it in two ways - 1. To create a vicious backlash against Muslims and their nations. 2. To pretend that they care about Muslim minorities and their human rights ( in countries they haven't been able to subjugate ), to invent division and terror.
I disagree not all. The West has to control everything, not least oil, and the ME was their natural target. Energy determines the cost of everything, so it must be controlled and manipulated everywhere it exists. Sharing, mutual benefit is not a guideline when power an wealth are the basic values.
Doris, I thought it was obvious that in order to control resources, the empire needed to control the countries "blessed" with oil and other resources. One tactic was to inject division and terror and islamophobia came in handy. Of course there was always the local collaborator class who were easily weaponised for regime change and eager to do the empire's bidding. Another was/is the use of vassal states to destabilise whole continents - the white apartheid regime in South Africa; Israel in the Middle East.
Walter Cronkite was a secret Democrat. He was never an investigative journalist, just an anchor.
I spent more time delivering newspapers than reading them, and the only one I'd subscribe to today, if I had a place for it to be sent, would be The Epoch Times.
All POTUS, including all House and Senate members must sign a declaration of complete support for the State of Israel if they ever want to become successful politicians. The Zionists own America.
They certainly seem to be the point of the spear. It’s so sad. After 1944, Jews were so amazing. They were the smartest Americans, joining Dr. King’s revolution early on, defending communism before McCarthy completely obliterated all reasoning around it. They had the best culture—best comedians, best food, best accents, wrote the best Broadway musicals— but then they started hating on the Palestinians and it’s all been downhill since. Now they’re just a bunch of fascist tools of empire, from Kagan and his ugly wife to Sheldon Adelson and his ill gotten gains. Tragic to see the fall of a people who suffered so much. Now they’re just like their tormentors.
Soros, Kissinger, Rothschilds and dozens more Zionists have done more harm than good for the planet because it was part of their oath as members of the Freemasons. They are not the same as American Jews who are indeed very talented but also very controlling.
Freemasons are members of the world's Think Tank along with the Trilateral Commission, Club of Rome, Bilderberg Group, UN, RIIA, and the Council on Foreign Affairs. Mafias are controlled by the Committee of 300 who are controlled by the Council of 13 who are controlled by the World Monarchy. This group of 6,000 people are known as the Black Nobility (Nobs) who are occultic, God complex annihilists. These people want us all dead or enslaved to live in their newly conquered world.
I’ve heard about this, that the Freemasons are some sort of Mafia out to take over the World. I don’t credit it much. In fact, I believe the Mafia is more in control than the Freemasons. And the CIA. And the corporate capitalists. And the privilege and greed and power hunger of white men and their molls. I just think that something happened to a great race of people to turn it from its peak of greatness to theirpresent condition of fascism and I think it’s how the US made Israel it’s cats paw in the Middle East. Money and power. It corrupts every time.
Thanks, Caitlin, for saying that support of Israel is support for war. I cannot support any US apartheid candidate that is fully in support of apartheid Israel. Apartheid was wrong in South Africa, Hitler Germany, in the US, and in Israel.
The Israeli police' latest war crime: "Israeli Policemen beat up a Palestinian resident of Shuafat refugee camp, covered his face, tied him up, punched him and seared a Star of David on his face. 16 police officers with 16 body cams- all malfunctioned. One Palestinian with a tattooed Star of David. I feel sick." - Avner Gvaryahu, @AGvaryahu, Twxtter, https://twitter.com/AGvaryahu/status/1692581162529489394?s=20 pixalated image of the branding is viewable.
"Basically the US empire’s strategy is to use Ukrainian bodies like a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive Russian military explosives as possible."
“….Basically the US empire’s strategy is to use Ukrainian bodies like a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive Russian military explosives as possible….”
Oh that’s just the beginning. The sheep in Europe buying into all of this have not understood yet that their sons and daughters are next in line to be shoved into the Ukrainian meat grinder on behalf of the owners BlackRock, Goldman, Raytheon, Boeing and Co.
That the Polish government are willing should be a clue, given that when this war started Poland was a pariah state for its director authoritarianism - but suddenly Poland is being whitewashed. Well the Polish leaders are rabid nutcases and they will drag all of Europe into this.
If you think the Nuland crew are rabid Russophobes…you’ll find those in charge in Pland are worse. Nihilists too actually. They don’t mind taking all of us with them into the funeral pyre.
RE: Presidential candidates and War -- and how much power do they even have?
RFK is just saying he isn't going to oppose the part of the war machine that has sold out to Israel. Unfortunately, you can't even begin to deal with the rest of the machine unless you deal with Israel first. If he falters there, then this ship ain't going anywhere.
Can you picture Cornel West going into Congress or the Pentagon with his hat in his hand saying "can we please just back off this war thing a little bit?"
They only appear to have lots of power when they agree with the war machine.
He’s also got a deluded sense of familial righteousness. He argues that his uncle was leading the push for civil rights. Not accurate. That his father was killed because of his opposition to the Vietnam war. Fantasy.
The fact that his name affords him a stage to contradict historical evidence says more about where he is than the stories that come out of his mouth. In this respect, he’s a liberal Trump. Promise what the audience wants to hear, damn the details that undermine the words.
It’s an irony that he’s being blackballed by the DP, because that assigns him more credibility than his own political record. Again, a la Trump! RFKJR is being met by entrenched political opposition, and Trump is being hamstrung by entrenched institutional opposition. It’s the task of Americans to understand that neither personality can be accurately defined by the guilt of their declared enemies.
Oh ok! I can't quite remember where, I think it was just some random website not from Caitlin's comment section. Yeah, I like Mr. West too at a time when dignity is at the highest on the endangered species list.
Ah yeah, you're in the belly of the beast. The sole reason why Americans are still the luckiest people on Earth but we're catching up with the rest of the world. Well,for starters, you better not even so much as look at someone the "wrong way" if you want to avoid getting assaulted. I've had to wear sunglasses at night too before.
"How about the fact that human lives are being spent like pennies for the advancement US global hegemony?"
So, how much exactly is a human life worth? I think the answer can be found in this statement of Caitlin's: "Basically the US empire’s strategy is to use Ukrainian bodies like a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive Russian military explosives as possible."
A human life is worth the cost of a sponge, and a cheap sponge at that.
Thanks a lot, US Empire, for devaluing beautiful human beings and using them as sponges to wipe up your messy messes worldwide. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, but I doubt you're capable of feeling guilt and shame at this point in the empire building. Am I right?
Yes - our time, like many historical periods, ultimately comes down to how much "human life" is valued. One could probably chart the decline of US empire by how much human life has declined in value - economically, healthwise - our healthcare system is a corporate extortion scheme - and how wars are the first choice of our corrupt American politicans, not the last.
Perhaps some wars can be justified and are unavoidable - perhaps we had no choice but to fight the Nazis. But this Ukrainian war was clearly avoidable, and there were a number of times the bloodshed could have been stopped. It still can be stopped, but there is no effort at all to stop it by those in power. It is a sure sign of a failed empire, of complete rot of US institutions and rot in the corrupt (senile) power in Washington DC.
Well said. I begin to wonder if the "senility" isn't a so much a bug but a feature of the US Empire... Anything goes wrong (majorly nuclear winter wrong) and the oligarchy can just point their finger at the senile leader in charge and say, "It was all HIS idea!" Sigh.
The "term limit" and "democratic" revolving door mechanisms are designed specifically for that - no responsibility and/or continuity for public faces. The ones the public is supposed to vote for. While in the background the real for-life rulers are free to implement their long-term plans.
The stupidity of the electorate to realize that is astounding.
It's surreal being so close to nuclear war now. Like I'm in some kind of movie. The senility of Joe Biden is clear as day - and yet they are pushing him to be the POTUS for another 4 years.
I read William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" when I was 12 or 13. I was a voracious reader - not as much so now as I used to be. Spend a lot of time writing often abrasive comments on social media. Must be the loneliness. Life goes on, until it doesn't.
If you didn't reread it when you were older then it's of little use. No way a teenager can get into depths of meaning available to grownups with somewhat conscious life experience.
The classics studied in high school are good for getting kids acquainted with the names. They'll have to get to the works much later, when they're older and ready.
Meanwhile, RFK, Jr. opened an Office in South Carolina yesterday and said:
"Kennedy explained that when he is President, he will scale back the war machine, make corporations pay their fair share, and pour the money back into policies that benefit the working people of this country.
He also shared how he will get housing costs down by reining in the corporations and backing up homebuyers and working people."
He is correctly focused and wants to win. Of course I strongly oppose his positions on Israel, Palestine and immigration. Of course, he may "evolve" on all these issues as politicians do. (hint, hint!)
As far as I know, he's the only one talking about housing costs and typing them to corporate greed and the need for government regulation. This alone is huge. He makes one incredibly left analysis and policy commitment an almost a daily basis, yet is being attacked by the so clued US left. Go figure.
bill wolfe: I hope RFK Jr. makes it to the White House if only because he can speak well and is well educated. I'm tired of seeing these old brain-dead seniles on TV.
Again I’ll say, his position is diplomatic—a smart choice for his level of power right now. His overall stances and his life’s work has been for justice. He can’t get justice by sitting around having “correct” positions for the incompetent Lefties. They don’t vote anyway. But Jews do and right now Jews in America have a LOT of power and most of them support Israel without so much as a blush. So be strategic: get elected, work with your “enemies” and try to find reasonable solutions. FDR did it. Xi does it. Blacks do it. Most women have to do it. In your face doesn’t work, but people who sit safely behind their computers “sharing” opinions don’t see that. They want purity godammit and they want it now!!! It’s so childish.
Almost everyone I talk to about politics is a right winger or Trumper, but almost all of them support RFK, Jr. Majority are working class, tradespeople, and small business persons.
I even met a couple like that who went so far as to claim that the climate emergency was a hoax. When I simply explained to them that it was NOT a hoax but that the so called "solutions" were designed to protect corporations and stick it to the small guy, they almost jumped out of their shoes agreeing with me! They then went through their issues and they were almost mirror image of RFK, Jr.'s positions, including a visceral hatred of the elites and their arrogance.
The US is on the verge of fascism. The systemic radical change that is in the wind is blowing from the right, not the left. So called leftists and progressives need to learn how to talk to people and work with them.
It amazes me that I, a pretty far left leaning person who is inclined towards polarization of debates, can so easily find common ground with so many right wingers. And it's not just a shared hatred of elites: the underlying material interests can be harmonized in many cases if the focus is on people's material needs instead of cultural and identity issues.
What a great reply and statement of values. I feel exactly the same. I see as much to agree with in Tucker’s work as I do RFK who calls himself a true liberal. And you’re right—the coalition that gets him elected (🫰) will probably not be the middle—they’re too self satisfied and comfortable —but the radicals on either end of the spectrum. I too have gone so far left I’m right. And I will happily dump the received wisdom of the left to find a new way of looking at and approaching the Armageddon we have created here and around the world. Thank you for your post.
I wish Caitlin would not engage electoral politics is such a half assed way, and run down RFK in the process.
I loathe Tucker, but I watch the RFK interview and was again astounded that. Presidential candidate was saying what he said during that incredible interview. I really can't understand how someone with a "left" politics could not appreciate and support that.
One (paranoid?) concern I got from that interview arose with his reference to his dinner with Pompeo and unidentified others. I got a smell of the move by the Liberty League in the 1930's when they had a dinner meeting with Smedley Butler to try to lure him into leading a racist military action to overthrow FDR. I sensed that Pompeo and his dinner buddies may have been seeking RFK to join with Trumpers (in political alliance or violent coup). It's areal possibility. Glad RFK has said he would not join the Trump ticket, but still, you never know what will happen when the shit hits the fan.
I want someone I believe I can trust more the RFK Jr. and the corrupt democrat party he is running in - despite all his hand waiving that he's a good guy. For me, RFK's profound ignorance regarding Israel - which Chris Hedges laid it all out clearly in a recent substack post: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/robert-f-kennedy-jr-the-israel-lobbys?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=778851&post_id=135969438&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email demonstrates RFK Jr's lack of integrity and a lazy/ignorant awareness of key foreign policy issues a POTUS needs to be aware of when running for office. RFK Jr. is also on record stating free market forces can resolve the climate crisis problem - which is sheer lunacy, right-wing lunacy.
Cornel West is a far better candidate for the Left - and maintains the courage of his convictions while running under a third party. Voting for the lesser of two evils is an immoral, broken belief that no one in their right mind should hold onto at this point. The lesser of two evils is still evil. The accusation of purity tests by those who maintain the "lesser of two evils" paradigm - is an excuse not to take responsibility for corruption - to hide under the sheets and pretend everything is ok. Lesser of Two evils is a false excuse to pretend and relieve your conscience that if you continue to vote for a deeply corrupt party called the Democratic party - you did what you could - when what you're doing is just perpetuating a growing evil, that grows worse every election cycle. It's wishful, infantile thinking that things will magically sooner or later get better by continuing the lesser of two evils scam by a corrupt, ageing senile political party - existing in a corrupt, two party corporate system.
Caitlin today…."Unconditional support for Israel doesn’t just mean supporting apartheid abuses and frequent bombings of Gaza, it means supporting the regular bombing of Syria, the annexation of the Golan Heights, and Israel’s insane warmongering against Iran. Israel is always in a state of war.”
Well, actually it means a lot more than that as well.
For example the Kennedy candidate we have seen of late has thrown in the ‘loyal to America' towel and succumbed to the much needed financial and political support from the US controllers, the “chosen” people over in Tel Aviv. He is not the future for the US and never will be, having thrown in his lot with the Netanyahu brigade. But here is the rub. Israel’s plans are not just as mentioned today. They subscribed to "Eretz Israel" for as long as anyone alive today can remember. It is their only one clear objective and well under way with America’s help, of course. Golan Heights, Syria, Palestine (of course), just three of the current components. It covers the land from the Euphrates River to the Nile, as follows……..part of Egypt, most of Syria, a smaller section of Kuwait, , a large portion of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, a small piece of Turkey and half of Iraq. All in the “Middle East”. Where are the problems today?
You guessed it.
That is what this coming election is all about and with Israel's estimated 400 nuclear warheads, developed with US assistance, together with the ongoing financial and military aid of a totally subservient USA, they’ll do it, too. Statements he has made show that he is now “their” man, as is Biden, as is Da Costa, Trump, Pence and as they will all be. Be assured of that fact.
Now Israel is the real game and the naive expectation for an RFK leadership in ‘exceptional' USA will do nothing but make that task a much easier run for the current feeble incumbent, Biden.
But no US presidential candidate will get to first base without "Eretz Israel" being signed off. 100%. Netanyahu demands it. As for the deaths that are yet to come….who in the USA even gives a damn.
I don't like RFK, Jr.'s position on capitalism and environmental policy either (I spent my life in that field). But he has done more environmental enforcement against corporate polluters than any big environmental group I am aware of. I accept the contradiction and try to convince him he is wrong and to change. If anything, he always does his homework, keeps an open mind, and is open to change. So I continue the struggle. And I listen to the messages he puts out on issues.
That approach is in no way "the acceptance of the lesser of two evils". It is not incrementalism and reformism. It's not even compromise. It is struggle with integrity, and that's the only way social change comes about.
Of course, I agree far more with Cornel West on the issues. But he is a moral philosopher and academic, not a politician. He doesn't want to win, he wants to educate and uplift and inspire. That's great. He's helping in his way. But please don't confuse that with electoral politics.
And just because a person can distinguish between electoral politics and moral reality or truth does not make that person corrupt or a sellout of someone who settles for the "lesser evil".
You may well be right with regard to Brother Cornel. I'm not so sure about RFK Jr.. But even if you are 100% correct, the guy's running in the Democratic primary, isn't he? They don't really appreciate elections. Do you seriously think there is a single chance they'll make him their appointee? Especially if he's indeed all those things you think he is?
For Christ's sake - are we going to spend YET ANOTHER election arguing over whether its worth it voting for a lesser of two evils party?
I can see why Caitlin doesn't even want to write about the next election shitshow - if it's just going to be a repeat of the last shitshow.
And no, it's not ok what RFK Jr. said about the Palestinians and Israel. Not ok for me. Not ok for many of us who think of ourselves as moral human beings. I cannot on any grounds, support the kind of shit RFK Jr. said - and Chris Hedges spelled it out for him and people who support him. No - I'm not going to look the other way and hold my nose.
Yes, after advocating on behalf of Palestinians for 40 years, I have been tempted to call it a day on many occasions, knowing that the odds are so against any form of justice ever being seen in that part of the globe. Just look at the feeble UN. My god. What a disgrace. Another US plaything manipulated through the ongoing threats of reducing support for the big NY social club. It once served a purpose to its credit. No longer, or the disgrace that is Palestine and Israel's apartheid would have been corrected by now. By the way....the comparison between South Africa's apartheid and Israel's daily children-killing apartheid will never be known thanks to the Western Press. But shooting young children was not a daily activity in South Africa.
The dirty funders are active in the UN organisation as well, buying support from little Island countries in the Pacific to get their vote. Been going so for decades. US vote, always. Never missed one, ever.
Yak yak yak. The idiocy is to withdraw from the battle then hide in your basement and complain about the sate of the nation. The cherry on top is to pretend to a moral superiority when you haven’t got the guts or the grace affect any change. Pop your cherry already.
I'm not an idiot, pal. I've got my eyes wide open. I know the DNC and corporate democrats are corrupt. I know corporate finance capitalism and Empire are the problem. I've read Marx and many radical perspectives and analyses. I know we need radical change. But I also understand electoral politics and social change. See above relies.
Yeah - sorry about the idiot I did get very angry and it was responding to Jeano's condescending yak yak yak - I live in a basement bullshit. Like I'm the irresponsible one, and she/he is the grown up. What a load of bs - that I'm the fucking problem, not her Israel cock sucking candidate. Where have I heard that line over and over again - oh yeah, it was Hilly campaign that blamed everyone but herself for her corrupt, democratic sorry ass campaign.
Look, I'm really not going to bring up RFK Jr. anymore. You support him all you want. That's your right as an American. But obviously, you know where I stand on the guy.
These "fighters", my ass. They claim to be principled and yet sell out like the corrupt politicians do at the very first opportunity.
The characters like @bill wolfe should either join politics full time and declare that out loudly, or at least quit pretending they're of the "simple folk". Simple folk don't have to compromise. And if they weren't things could have changed indeed.
That’s such an old criticism of electoral politics, it was part of the Clinton Machine’s switch to republicanism. If you can’t see thru it by now, you’re just willfully ignorant. Moreover, the word idiot comes from Ancient Greece where the people who didn’t vote were called “idiota”. So in fact those who don’t vote are actual idiots. Proven by the fact that those who don’t vote have let the elites, who really do not like people voting, persuade them that it’s smart to get butt hurt over “evil” and throw a tantrum and give up. So not only are you an idiot, you’re a puppet of the elites and a fool to boot.
The only puppet I see here is someone who keeps voting for the Democratic party - and wants to convince me to vote for the same corrupt shit over and over again.
If you vote for the democratic party, you are a political chump.
I think that it is all part of the psychological aspect of maintaining the empire. For example, every citizen is expected to be loyal to the empire and think it is good. That it's actions are good, and has good intentions. The news always portrays the empire in a favorable light. Never had it said it has done anything wrong. That is its purpose, to spew government propaganda. You see these articulate men its suits, elegant sophisticated ladies, and they have connections to everything. So you assume they are credible.
Comedians have become bootlickers, gone are the days of Hicks or Carlin. Why? You wrote about the celebrity inner circle and how bootlickers are elevated and the black sheep are rejected. You said the same thing happens in journalism. You can't cover real journalism and be elevated by a major network due to conflict of interest, interest of the empire can not be compromised.
Remember North Korea yeah, Kim was to be this major scary guy, but then he gets put on the back burner. China and Russia are all the rage. Remember the Iraq war? Now its all about the Ukrainian war, we will forget about them, too. You know, like no one really remember 2014. My point is the news outlets tell us what to think and feel. They tell us what is important...Why? The US empire aims to manufacture our consent and what better way to do that then create stories that support US empire interests.
Canada has just contracted to buy 88 billion dollars (including projected maintenance costs) worth of F35JSF the last of which will not be delivered until 2034.
As we are seeing with this war it is being decided with missiles and drones.
The question has been asked for a long time why are we are building jet fighters costing 100 million per copy when they can be shot down by missiles costing a few thousand dollars?
Will Canada be looking for a cancellation of contract?
I wonder if Ottawa will cancel its contract , especially when our government spending is out of control.
The F22 production was shut down because of huge cost overruns. The F35JSF (costing 1.5 trillion dollars to develop) may never see action because of its high cost, high maintenance costs and the rapidly changing face of war .
Yeah good question. Why are they building super aircraft carriers that cost billions of dollars, when a few hypersonic missiles will blow any ship on the ocean out of the water?
Military doctrine has now evolved to drones and missiles. When will Raytheon and Boeing catch up? Or is it just all about corporate profits? Maybe that's always what it's been about.
We live by myths of Chinese/China aggression: they are our bed-time stories - and we're always asleep or on the point. I especially like the one about Mao's ability to kill and starve millions - while Chiang Kai Shek, that Western lackey, was angelically selling bibles on which he held a monopoly in China. Meanwhile Mao was on 5600 mile 370 day trek to avoid Western backed forces under Chiang, literally walking for his life, but miraculously, he was able to kill/starve millions in the process. Truly wondrous. And plenty more stories just like that.
“….Basically the US empire’s strategy is to use Ukrainian bodies like a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive Russian military explosives as possible….”
Oh that’s just the beginning. The sheep in Europe buying into all of this have not understood yet that their sons and daughters are next in line to be shoved into the Ukrainian meat grinder on behalf of the owners BlackRock, Goldman, Raytheon, Boeing and Co.
That the Polish government are willing should be a clue, given that when this war started Poland was a pariah state for its director authoritarianism - but suddenly Poland is being whitewashed. Well the Polish leaders are rabid nutcases and they will drag all of Europe into this.
The crazy part of it is that Russia and China have spent the last forty years rebuilding their economies and a better life for their peoples, which is exactly what we should be doing here in the West. Instead we exhaust ourselves waging wars. We talk about weakening and China and Russia with no regard for how we are destroying ourselves.
It is obvious Russia was well prepared for conflict in Ukraine. NATO has disgraced itself in how it has conducted itself, so badly, its performance has been genocidal for Ukraine.
Scott Ritter has reported that war against China is off the table it has been "war gamed" and the USA loses every time. Even so we will have to live with the brinkmanship of war until the US exhausts itself or does something really, really, moronic.
In the mean time our pathetic elites are showing us how the geopolitics of spite, envy and imbecilic stupidity is practiced.
Well said.
One of the surprises (for me) coming out of the horror of this still continuing Ukraine war, has been just how poorly NATO and the West military doctrine and equipment have faired against Russia. For all the trillions spent on the US military over the decades - it has been an eye opener to see how the NATO system primarily built on lucrative independent contracts for war corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, etc - that have led to huge profits for these corporations (and Wallstreet) - how disastrously the actual use and reality of their US/NATO military equipment and even military doctrine has performed against the Russian military doctrine and organization. We have seen the ascendency of sophisticated integrated missile/air defence systems and rapid military industrial deployment become a decisive and horrific brutality upon the Ukrainian battlefield. While the West has been left with a war of lies and propaganda, while shielding a senile American POTUS from all criticism from the vast amount of blood and destruction - that the warpigs and Neocons still running the show in DC - have not lifted a single finger to stop. Nor have the progressives or democrats - hell, Bernie Sanders is all in for more bloodshed - in the name of Ukrainian freedom.
Some freedom. 100s of thousands of Ukrainians have now been slaughtered in a war the deep state and Washington DC knew some time ago could not be won. A war that was indeed provoked by the Neocon fanatics who still are at the helm of US hegemony - in suicidal control - pushing toward nuclear escalation.
But all of this abstract analysis of military capability - pales in comparison to the number of human lives taken and destroyed. And the horror that no political leaders in the West have yet to speak up against the ongoing human obscenity of this war, and bring this continuing mass murder to some kind of conclusion. I am filled with rage - enough rage where my faith in the human race and human life is at an all time low.
I share your rage.
You also said it well.
Well said and recently we'll sung by the country musician Oliver Anthony in his song Rich Men North of Richmond. It came out on YouTube early last week and by the end of the week he's world famous. Next week it'll be sung in karaoke bars nationwide. Maybe the following week it starts a revolution.
Politicians are making the song their own on the Left and the right saying they have the solutions. THEY ARE THE RICH NORTH OF RICHMOND! They are trying to use the song to keep us divided hence conquered in service to their Oligarch Masters our Rulers who fear our unity. They fear us so much they have their private armies to protect them from us. They fear the nooses, firing squads and guillotines of revolution.
Well. The third verse promotes the sort of thing the song claims to be against. Hate the poor on welfare.
The poor are poor because they do what makes them poor. The verse doesn't convey hate but lack of pity.
I have to somewhat disagree with you here.
It isn't like the poor have other options. I think TV shows like "The Wire" and even "Justified" show the cause of the conditions quite well.
When you've been beaten into the gutter with no chance to crawl out, then what? You can be really smart, but still unable to break out. I'm pretty sure that but for a 10 second chance, I might be in that "poor group" rather than traveling the world.
"Lack of Pity" is just a more socially acceptable way of describing "Hate". TBH, it sounds quite racist to me.
I'm not claiming to have solutions, but when the rich take all the income and control all the wealth, what's left?
I don't get those who seem to believe that Bezos, and those like him, is a "great businessman". He's an immoral cad that uses the system to prey upon the weak and helpless.
I really don't understand why when I point this fact out, some people get so angry that I have to mollify them and never talk about it again. They claim I'm subscribing to conspiracy theories. Well, look at the results. How is that a conspiracy? Why is this acceptable. Is it a conspiracy to point out what Caitlin talks about here?
Damn, you make excellent points and I can't disagree with any. The rich are so because of Patrimonial Capitalism and capitalizing from the labor of wage slaves. You don't get rich working for yourself. You get rich having others work for you. A lady I knew who owned a Soul Food restaurant had a sign on the wall that said, "Why work for the Man 8 hours a day when you can work for yourself for 24.".
It's a pleasure meeting you John.
Our nations can rot but oh boy how quick we are to go and rebuild other nations (after destroying them in the first place).
It isn’t actually rebuilding—it’s strip mining while we pay off the thugs we need to keep their population in line. None of the money we send gets to anybody who needs it. It goes to the Zelenskies of the World. And, I forgot to say, to our military contractors.
Yes, you’re right, I was having trouble thinking of the word to use. Should have put rebuilding in quotation marks.
I know. I do that. Language has been so prostituted by the Shit-Libs and Neo-cons that self expression is a hazardous thing to do. 🤗😍🙏
It is wealth transfer from us "taxpayers" to the elitist scum...
I am not sure we can make a comment that any nation, China, US , Russia, is actually trying to better the lives of their citizens. That is a stretch. Sure, some are much worse than others in some metrics, ( particularly the USA) but none deserve credit for being "pro- commoner ". All have their own power elite and it is their desires that get fulfilled.
Of course Russia was well prepared, it was telegraphed for years and even a novice tactician could tell the Minsk agreements were to buy time for a shift in the battlespace. You said that NATO has disgraced itself, when hasn't NATO disgraced itself? It is a disgraceful organization, it should not exist. It has never been an altruistic righteous organization looking to foment peace. It is merely another branch of the Global American Empire ( GAE) that helps promulgate managerial terrorism.
NATO knew from their own war game scenarios they were never going to control the battles space in Ukraine, and they knew the "counter offensive" would fail as well, but they pushed the narrative that victory was certain all the while more bodies piled up. ( I am saddened by all loss of life,, Russian and Ukrainian. It is senseless) Whatever the end goal is, it is sociopathic and should not be evaluated for "military performance " as they do not have the same goals most are measuring them by. Killing a bunch of lower class people with tons of ammunition which will need resupplied in an area that is problematic for a geopolitical "foe" , while making bank for the elites, is a very probable goal. Of course I do not know this for sure because I do not sit on the CFR and have that type of clearance. I create my own educated opinions based upon the best available knowledge.
"Scott Ritter has reported that war against China is off the table it has been "war gamed" and the USA loses every time."
This part gives me concerns, particularly with Ritter's motivations. War with China is not of the table,, rather, it is very much being glued to the table. At least for the common narrative. There have been war game scenarios that show China winning, but they were sponsored by the MIC, so there was an implicit bias to show the US machine needs more..
In reality, the United States has a decisive military advantage over China using conventional warfare including newer forms of 5th generation warfare and Netwar . Clearly if WMDs are used the game changes. However, I have seen those war game scenarios where China wins a conventional war and in all of them the scenario severely handicapped the US War machine. However, I am making the assumption that the goal would be to win the war, just like it is assumed in the scenarios, but as seen over the past few decades "winning" a war has not been the goal.. rather sustaining one was the goal .
So, if it did occur and was without WMD'S, It would be an ugly war and while completely unnecessary, if waged to win, the US would cause China to submit relatively quickly. With tremendous loss on both sides.. If it were not fought to win and it turned into a war of attrition, China would grind the US down IMO. But again, it is wholly unnecessary.
However, I do not know the actual hositiites between these countries, it all could be a ruse. We are lied to all the time about everything. With that being said, Ritter's comments about the gaming scenarios smell funny and I do not know what to make of them.
With all of that being said, I think everyone should pay extra attention to Africa. To a degree,there is a good chance global war is already very much in progress, it just isn't kinetic yet. ( 5th and 6th generation warfare) Niger and ECOWAS is getting hot and it is very convoluted with all the major players poking around. I am not sure what the end game is, nor can I tell without access to classified intel ( nobody can because we all live in national security states) but what is clear, the largest player on the board does not want peace. ( GAE)
Lastly :
"We talk about weakening and China and Russia with no regard for how we are destroying ourselves"
What are we destroying brother? The constitutional republic has been dead for over a century. We live in a technocratic national security surveillance state. Elections are kayfab. It is a managed democracy, inverted totalitarianism. They own the banks. The schools. The economy. Your life as a citizen. ( do something without permissions, see what happens. ) The idea that we are destroying ourselves implies something is left. It is all gone except for the Spectacle.
Sure the economy can crash and our standard of living goes down, but that is because it has been built on a house of cards. It needs to come down for any of us, from America to Australia, to crawl our from underneath the boot.
Agree for the most part on the last pph. This CBDC digital$ development may begin as soon as September 20th, (with FedCoin coming in,hopefully voluntary until cash is canceled). The Bill'schip is the most insane, yet could be mandated for traveling about/getting into school or offices or concerts and planes). Unless we have our own currency, they have our hide. I can't see barter working well, myself.
Brilliant. Thank you. Just to be clear—this was meant for Robert Billyard’s comment above. Substack gets weird in its comment placement sometimes.
"Never get involved in a land war in Asia."
It was good advice in World War II, and was demonstrated as fact in both Korea and Vietnam. Come to think of it, it also applies to Afghanistan and Iraq. They are in Asia, after all.
Besides, China makes most of our stuff. They could strangle our economy in a week. Talk of war with them is...I'll be nice and say irrational.
So True, Truman fired Gen MacArthur for trying to start a war with China. After WW ll there were lunatic US generals who wanted to nuke both Russia and China. Truman always said "the buck stops here" but approved the gratuitous bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Your restraint is admirable.
"The crazy part of it is that Russia and China have spent the last forty years rebuilding their economies and a better life for their peoples"
Nah, that's romanticized bullshit.
To begin with, it's comparatively easy for an economy to put up huge GDP increases when it begins from a condition of massive underdevelopment. Whereas the US is so developed that many Americans already own more Stuff than they can use. Which is not to say that inequality isn't a serious problem. Debt-financed consumerism has become a substitute for wages being too low and the rent being too damn high, which sometimes leaves even Americans with six-figure incomes in a state of Precarity.
But by and large, the problems of the US are 1st World problems. There's no present-day analogy in the US to 20th century developing world situations of entire cities of people making a living by burning the plastic insulation off of electrical wires in open fires built in oil drums set on the streets in front of their homes in order to get at the copper, with the residue polluting their well water. That's a Chinese industrial practice. The people who live in those towns don't like it. But it's a living. Their doctors- who also live there, and breathe the air and the particulates in the soil, and drink the well water- don't like it either. Some of the Chinese are laying the groundwork for improving it. They don't have a magic wand. In the meantime, that pollution and toxic waste is the material reality of the industry.
Both Russia and China have huge corruption problems in their industrial sector. Russia more than China. At least some Chinese had centuries of experience as a merchant economy; they had the basics down, as far as knowing that there's more to capitalist economy than just bribery, looting, nepotism, and plunder. Most Chinese were peasants, but there was executive aptitude present in the business owners.
Whereas the Russians started out as either peasants or Marxist theoreticians. Neither background works to build business enterprises. Many Russians are well-educated and technically skilled, but it's all wasted if the bosses are just out and out gangsters with no legit skills. Putin has tried to improve this- he has improved it, compared to the plutocratic anarchy that he inherited. But he's also embedded in the same corrupt system.
The difference also explains why there's so much foreign investment in Chinese businesses, whereas foreign investment is either restricted, forbidden, unwelcome, or just plain foolish in Russian businesses.
What's happening with China is a weird situation that I don't pretend to fully comprehend. I only know a few facts- one of which is that China and the US are economically interdependent. They host much of our consumer goods manufacturing, and even some strategic manufacturing, like some of our military quartermastery. US businesses and consumers are among their biggest buyers. We pay the PRC government annual interest on the nearly $1 trillion USD in T-bills they hold. It would take years- even decades- to untangle that situation. So how are we gonna have a war? An increase in military budgets, on the other hand...
The last time imperialist, world domination obsessed China sent toops into combat was 1979. Compare the track record of the humble and peace loving United States since that time.
And lest someone dutifully bleat "but Muh Uighurs!" nobody gave a shit until the United decided that China wasn't meekly taking orders.
The CIA- funded Uighurs? Those Uighurs? What kind of moron at the State Dept thought it was a good idea to go the Uighur route? I know the Odious Ass-kiss of Evil David Frum was involved. Odious has become part of his name now, like Mean in Joe Greene or L’il for Nasty.
When whites came to N/A there were 50-100 million Natives. Now? `~ 2 million in the 2010 census. Sure some was disease transmission but even some of that was purposeful, see Jeffrey Amherst who gave the natives smallpox infected blankets to exterminate “that execrable race” and “that vermin”.
Meanwhile the Uighurs, exempted from the one-child policy have seen their numbers soar 3x as fast as the Han. Some genocide. There has been no BSer in world history to hold a candle to Frum et al.
Without expressing any opinion on CIA involvement, if the Uighurs did not exist, the CiA would have to invent them.
Meanwhile, American participation in the genocide in Yemen? Crickets.
https://www.thecanadafiles.com/articles/subcommittee-report-declaring-uighur-genocide-dominated-by-researchers-and-groups-funded-by-cia-cut-out-national-endowment-for-democracy.
Excellent info.
Spam.
“Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”
The wholesale willful slaughter of approximately 30 million buffalo destroyed the Plains Indians way of life and their almost total disappearance. Multiple tribes and tens of thousands of the people. The buffalo was the indigenous’ source of food, clothing, shelter, tools, medicine for thousands of years.
It is reported that Europeans killed at least 37 million natives in all of the Americas within one century.
Don’t whitewash history.
And then put them on reservations where the Indian Agents stole the money supplied to feed the Natives and let the Natives starve on the front porch.
It's obvious you've never lived on a Native American reservation. You probably wouldn't even understand the term "food desert" too. Or "Carlisle Schools" where thousands of children were taken away from their parents and forced to speak only English and to forget their culture (and where many died due to disease, poor nutrition, physical and psychological abuse, and sometimes just lack of clothing in cold weather). Some of us have ancestors who lived on reservations and were forced into the Carlisle Schools. White Americans are so blissfully ignorant of the true genocide--and it shows in comments like this.
The genocide of indian tribes south of the border was no laughing matter either.
In Argentina (who prides itself for having no indians) a systematic murder of all Indians in Patagonia was launched in the 1880's under president Julio Roca called the campaign of the desert. Tens of thousands of indians were driven away from their homeland and settled in inhospitable lands near the Andes. Thousands were killed in the process and those that survived were separated by sex so they would not be able to procreate. The last Tehuelche chief was put on display in a museum in Buenos Aires so the public could go see a "live indian". So perished the indian nation.
The Revolutionary War or the War of Independence to break away from England was in large part because the colonists wanted to continue the West expansion and in doing so to displace and kill the indigenous and take the lands, and also the colonists wanted to continue the right to enslave peoples, both going against denunciation of those acts by England. It certainly wasn’t simply the tax on tea. Your concept that indigenous peoples were happy and content on reservations and their deaths were mostly of their own doing is a wild distortion of truth. And I suspect you believe that God and Jesus were on the side of the murderers, and most wrongs were just missteps for the greater good. Sociopathic thinking.
My point was what happened to the Natives. There was no “US” then. Just people lying stealing and murdering the Natives. You’re surely wrong about Amherst. Indeed his correspondence survives and from which I quoted.
Ah yes, those Natives were vicious, as one might be when your people are murdered, your land is stolen and you are lied to serially.
You desperately need to visit Yale’s Avalon Project and read the treaties whites broke- every one, often before the ink was dry.
What you described is the indigenous Honlmeland Security Department fighting murderous invaders.
I was confused by your reply so I searched the thread and now I understand. Forgive my screwup with Homeland Security. I didn't notice until your comment showed up in my email.
Read The Seven States Of California, by Philip Fradkin. California played host to some of the largest massacres of noncombatants and instances of ethnic removal and eradication of non-Europeans in the history of North America.
Your comments about disease inadvertently spread by Europeans being responsible for most of the deaths in the North American tribes are more or less accurate; I've been jumped on for making many of the same truthful observations in my previous comments. The rest of your narrative is rife with inaccuracies, and inexcusably exculpatory of the European settlers at the expense of the indigenous tribes, who lost not only their lands but their lifeways, and often their language.
Kicking people when they're down and sneering at their misfortunes is the sort of thing that gives European settlers a bad name. I wish it was entirely undeserved. You've just shown that it isn't.
This sounds suspiciously like “we tortured some folks.” Yoo hoo, is that you Berry? All dressed up in your mama’s WASP clothes?
Of course it would be news to you that they starved on reservations. Ignorance is not a ringing endorsement fir your infomercial that White people were not that bad. But it’s good of you to show your ignorance and privilege so clearly.
🤢🤮
"But there was some murdering and raping for sure, even here in California, and there was a massacre or two here also..."
19th century settlement of California, List of recorded massacres:
Year Date Name Current location Description Reported casualties References
1846 April 6 Sacramento River massacre Sacramento River in Shasta County, Northern California Captain John C. Frémont's men attacked a band of Indians (probably Wintun) on the Sacramento River in California, killing between 120 and 200 Indians. 120–200 [60]
1846 June Sutter Buttes massacre Sutter Buttes in Sutter County, Northern California Captain John C. Frémont's men attacked a rancheria on the banks of the Sacramento River near Sutter Buttes, killing several Patwin people. 14+ [61]
1846 December Pauma massacre Pauma Valley in San Diego County, Southern California 11 Californios captured at Rancho Pauma were killed as horse thieves by Indians at Warner Springs, California, leading to the Temecula massacre. 11 (settlers) [62]
1846 December Temecula massacre Temecula in Riverside County, Southern California 33 to 40 Luiseño Indians killed in an ambush in revenge for the Pauma Massacre east of Temecula, California. 33–40 [62]
1847 March Rancheria Tulea massacre Napa Valley in Napa County, Northern California White slavers retaliate to a slave escape by massacring five Indians in Rancheria Tulea. 5 [61]
1847 March 29 Kern and Sutter massacres Mill Creek in Tehama County, Northern California In response to a plea from White settlers to put an end to raids, U.S. Army Captain Edward Kern and rancher John Sutter led 50 men in attacks on three Indian villages. 20 [61]
1847 late June/early July Konkow Maidu slaver massacre Chico in Butte County, Northern California Slavers kill 12–20 Konkow Maidu Indians in the process of capturing 30 members of the tribe for the purpose of forced slavery. 12–20 [61]
1850 May 15 Bloody Island massacre Clear Lake in Lake County, Northern California Nathaniel Lyon and his U.S. Army detachment of cavalry killed 60–100 Pomo people on Bo-no-po-ti island near Clear Lake, (Lake Co., California); they believed the Pomo had killed two Clear Lake settlers who had been abusing and murdering Pomo people. (The Island Pomo had no connections to the enslaved Pomo.) This incident led to a general outbreak of settler attacks against and mass killing of native people all over Northern California. The site is now California Registered Historical Landmark #427. 60–100 [63][64][65]
1851 January 11 Mariposa War Various sites in Mariposa County, Northern California The gold rush increased pressure on the Native Americans of California, because miners forced Native Americans off their gold-rich lands. Many were pressed into service in the mines; others had their villages raided by the army and volunteer militia. Some Native American tribes fought back, beginning with the Ahwahnechees and the Chowchilla in the Sierra Nevada and San Joaquin Valley leading a raid on the Fresno River post of James D. Savage, in December 1850. In retaliation Mariposa County Sheriff James Burney led local militia in an indecisive clash with the natives on January 11, 1851, on a mountainside near present-day Oakhurst, California. 40+
1851 Old Shasta Town Massacre Shasta in Shasta County, Northern California Miners killed 300 Wintu Indians near Old Shasta, California and burned down their tribal council meeting house. 300 [66]
1852 April 23 Bridge Gulch massacre Hayfork Creek in Trinity County, Northern California 70 American men led by Trinity County sheriff William H. Dixon killed more than 150 Wintu people in the Hayfork Valley of California, in retaliation for the killing of Col. John Anderson.150 [67]
1853 Howonquet massacre Smith River in Del Norte County, Northern California Californian settlers attacked and burned the Tolowa village of Howonquet, massacring 70 people. 70 [68]
1853 Yontoket Massacre Yontocket in Del Norte County, Northern California A posse of settlers attacked and burned a Tolowa rancheria at Yontocket, California, killing 450 Tolowa during a prayer ceremony. 450 [69][70]
1853 Achulet Massacre Lake Earl in Del Norte County, Northern California White settlers launched an attack on a Tolowa village near Lake Earl in California, killing between 65 and 150 Indians at dawn. 65–150 [71]
1853 Before December 31 "Ox" incident Visalia in Tulare County, Central Valley U.S. forces attacked and killed an unreported number of Indians in the Four Creeks area (Tulare County, California) in what was referred to by officers as "our little difficulty" and "the chastisement they have received". [72]
1855 January 22 Klamath River massacres Klamath River in Del Norte County, Northern California In retaliation for the murder of six settlers and the theft of some cattle, whites commenced a "war of extermination against the Indians" in Humboldt County, California. [73]
1856 March Shingletown Shingleton in Shasta County, Northern California In reprisal for Indian stock theft, white settlers massacred at least 20 Yana men, women, and children near Shingletown, California. 20 [74]
1856–1859 Round Valley Settler Massacres Round Valley in Mendocino County, Northern California White settlers killed over a thousand Yuki Indians in Round Valley over the course of three years in an uncountable number of separate massacres. 1,000+ [75][76]
1859–1860 Mendocino War Various sites in Mendocino County, Northern California White settlers calling themselves the "Eel River Rangers", led by Walter Jarboe, killed at least 283 Indian men and countless women and children in 23 engagements over the course of six months. They were reimbursed by the U.S. government for their campaign. 283+ [75]
1859 September Pit River Pit River in Northern California White settlers massacred 70 Achomawi Indians (10 men and 60 women and children) in their village on the Pit River in California. 70 [77]
1859 Chico Creek Big Chico Creek in Butte County, Northern California White settlers attacked a Maidu camp near Chico Creek in California, killing indiscriminately 40 Indians. 40 [78]
1860 Exact date unknown Massacre at Bloody Rock Mendocino National Forest in Mendocino County, Northern California A group of 65 Yuki Indians were surrounded and massacred by white settlers at Bloody Rock, in Mendocino County, California. 65
1860 February 26 1860 Wiyot massacre Tuluwat Island in Humboldt County, Northern California In three nearly simultaneous assaults on the Wiyot, at Indian Island, Eureka, Rio Dell, and near Hydesville, California, white settlers killed between 80 and 250 Wiyot in Humboldt County, California. Victims were mostly women, children, and elders, as reported by Bret Harte at Arcata newspaper. Other villages were massacred within two days. The main site is National Register of Historic Places in the United States #66000208. 80–250 [79][80][81][82]
1863 April 19 Keyesville massacre Keyesville in Kern County, Central Valley American militia and members of the California Volunteers cavalry killed 35 Tübatulabal men in Kern County, California. 35 [83]
1863 August 28 Konkow Trail of Tears Chico in Butte County to Covelo in Mendocino County, Northern California In August 1863 all Konkow Maidu were to be sent to the Bidwell Ranch in Chico and then be taken to the Round Valley Reservation at Covelo in Mendocino County. Any Indians remaining in the area were to be shot. Maidu were rounded up and marched under guard west out of the Sacramento Valley and through to the Coastal Range. 461 Native Americans started the trek, 277 finished.[84] They reached the Round Valley on September 18, 1863. 184 [84]
1864 Oak Run massacre Oak Run in Shasta County, Northern California California settlers massacred 300 Yana Indians who had gathered near the head of Oak Run, California, for a spiritual ceremony. 300 [85]
1865 Owens Lake massacre Owens Lake in Inyo County, Northern California To avenge the killing of a woman and child at Haiwai Meadows, White vigilantes attacked a Paiute camp on Owens Lake in California, killing about 40 men, women, and children. 40 [86]
1865 Three Knolls massacre Mill Creek in Tehama County, Northern California White settlers massacred a Yana community at Three Knolls on the Mill Creek, California. [87]
1868 Campo Seco Mill Creek in Tehama County, Northern California A posse of white settlers massacred 33 Yahis in a cave north of Mill Creek, California. 33 [88][89]
1871 Kingsley Cave massacre Ishi Wilderness in Tehama County, Northern California 4 settlers killed 30 Yahi Indians in Tehama County, California about two miles from Wild Horse Corral in the Ishi Wilderness. It is estimated that this massacre left only 15 members of the Yahi tribe alive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide
I remember that. They invaded Vietnam, which at the time probably had the most veteran combat army in the world, and got their heads handed to them.
At least they learned and never tried it again, unlike several other nations I could name.
The Uighurs were radicalized against China in Afghanistan, just like other Muslims, and conditioned to see the West as their saviours. China's socialist bent was the selling point: socialism was the enemy of godliness. And they wanted to be godly...and... free...like...us.
But most Muslims changed their mind about that, and turned on us, when they couldn't use us in common causes. Who knew? It's just all a game, a "great" game.
The US created Islamophobia. The vile tactics of empire weaponised it in two ways - 1. To create a vicious backlash against Muslims and their nations. 2. To pretend that they care about Muslim minorities and their human rights ( in countries they haven't been able to subjugate ), to invent division and terror.
I disagree not all. The West has to control everything, not least oil, and the ME was their natural target. Energy determines the cost of everything, so it must be controlled and manipulated everywhere it exists. Sharing, mutual benefit is not a guideline when power an wealth are the basic values.
Doris, I thought it was obvious that in order to control resources, the empire needed to control the countries "blessed" with oil and other resources. One tactic was to inject division and terror and islamophobia came in handy. Of course there was always the local collaborator class who were easily weaponised for regime change and eager to do the empire's bidding. Another was/is the use of vassal states to destabilise whole continents - the white apartheid regime in South Africa; Israel in the Middle East.
Did I say anything contrary to this? You are preaching to the converted.
Sorry! Doris, I didn't mean to preach, just clarifying my point.
I think the BBC and The Guardian give the NYT a good run for its money
They all have the same writers.
and they all got rid of their investigative reporters decades ago
When did they ever have a need for one?
Only in the Bourne movie?
I don't know anything about "the Bourne movie."
A Guardian reporter is a good guy there but gets murdered by mad dogs from US intelligence. I think it’s the third one.
"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed." Mark Twain
Daniel Ellsberg was never a newsperson.
Do you mean Hersh?
Walter Cronkite was a secret Democrat. He was never an investigative journalist, just an anchor.
I spent more time delivering newspapers than reading them, and the only one I'd subscribe to today, if I had a place for it to be sent, would be The Epoch Times.
"Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience"
Mark Twain
'The Daily Terrorgraph' - https://mikehampton.substack.com/p/daily-terrorgraph-telegraph-british-propaganda
Definitely the UK's worst regarding the war in Ukraine.
All POTUS, including all House and Senate members must sign a declaration of complete support for the State of Israel if they ever want to become successful politicians. The Zionists own America.
They certainly seem to be the point of the spear. It’s so sad. After 1944, Jews were so amazing. They were the smartest Americans, joining Dr. King’s revolution early on, defending communism before McCarthy completely obliterated all reasoning around it. They had the best culture—best comedians, best food, best accents, wrote the best Broadway musicals— but then they started hating on the Palestinians and it’s all been downhill since. Now they’re just a bunch of fascist tools of empire, from Kagan and his ugly wife to Sheldon Adelson and his ill gotten gains. Tragic to see the fall of a people who suffered so much. Now they’re just like their tormentors.
Soros, Kissinger, Rothschilds and dozens more Zionists have done more harm than good for the planet because it was part of their oath as members of the Freemasons. They are not the same as American Jews who are indeed very talented but also very controlling.
Freemasons are members of the world's Think Tank along with the Trilateral Commission, Club of Rome, Bilderberg Group, UN, RIIA, and the Council on Foreign Affairs. Mafias are controlled by the Committee of 300 who are controlled by the Council of 13 who are controlled by the World Monarchy. This group of 6,000 people are known as the Black Nobility (Nobs) who are occultic, God complex annihilists. These people want us all dead or enslaved to live in their newly conquered world.
I’ve heard about this, that the Freemasons are some sort of Mafia out to take over the World. I don’t credit it much. In fact, I believe the Mafia is more in control than the Freemasons. And the CIA. And the corporate capitalists. And the privilege and greed and power hunger of white men and their molls. I just think that something happened to a great race of people to turn it from its peak of greatness to theirpresent condition of fascism and I think it’s how the US made Israel it’s cats paw in the Middle East. Money and power. It corrupts every time.
Thanks, Caitlin, for saying that support of Israel is support for war. I cannot support any US apartheid candidate that is fully in support of apartheid Israel. Apartheid was wrong in South Africa, Hitler Germany, in the US, and in Israel.
The Israeli police' latest war crime: "Israeli Policemen beat up a Palestinian resident of Shuafat refugee camp, covered his face, tied him up, punched him and seared a Star of David on his face. 16 police officers with 16 body cams- all malfunctioned. One Palestinian with a tattooed Star of David. I feel sick." - Avner Gvaryahu, @AGvaryahu, Twxtter, https://twitter.com/AGvaryahu/status/1692581162529489394?s=20 pixalated image of the branding is viewable.
"Basically the US empire’s strategy is to use Ukrainian bodies like a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive Russian military explosives as possible."
This!
“….Basically the US empire’s strategy is to use Ukrainian bodies like a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive Russian military explosives as possible….”
Oh that’s just the beginning. The sheep in Europe buying into all of this have not understood yet that their sons and daughters are next in line to be shoved into the Ukrainian meat grinder on behalf of the owners BlackRock, Goldman, Raytheon, Boeing and Co.
That the Polish government are willing should be a clue, given that when this war started Poland was a pariah state for its director authoritarianism - but suddenly Poland is being whitewashed. Well the Polish leaders are rabid nutcases and they will drag all of Europe into this.
Jesus, I hope you're wrong on this one.
If you think the Nuland crew are rabid Russophobes…you’ll find those in charge in Pland are worse. Nihilists too actually. They don’t mind taking all of us with them into the funeral pyre.
RE: Presidential candidates and War -- and how much power do they even have?
RFK is just saying he isn't going to oppose the part of the war machine that has sold out to Israel. Unfortunately, you can't even begin to deal with the rest of the machine unless you deal with Israel first. If he falters there, then this ship ain't going anywhere.
Can you picture Cornel West going into Congress or the Pentagon with his hat in his hand saying "can we please just back off this war thing a little bit?"
They only appear to have lots of power when they agree with the war machine.
Otherwise they might as well be dead.
He’s also got a deluded sense of familial righteousness. He argues that his uncle was leading the push for civil rights. Not accurate. That his father was killed because of his opposition to the Vietnam war. Fantasy.
The fact that his name affords him a stage to contradict historical evidence says more about where he is than the stories that come out of his mouth. In this respect, he’s a liberal Trump. Promise what the audience wants to hear, damn the details that undermine the words.
It’s an irony that he’s being blackballed by the DP, because that assigns him more credibility than his own political record. Again, a la Trump! RFKJR is being met by entrenched political opposition, and Trump is being hamstrung by entrenched institutional opposition. It’s the task of Americans to understand that neither personality can be accurately defined by the guilt of their declared enemies.
What's this about cornel west is RFK's VP nominee or did I just read misleading info somewhere?
Oh ok! I can't quite remember where, I think it was just some random website not from Caitlin's comment section. Yeah, I like Mr. West too at a time when dignity is at the highest on the endangered species list.
Ah yeah, you're in the belly of the beast. The sole reason why Americans are still the luckiest people on Earth but we're catching up with the rest of the world. Well,for starters, you better not even so much as look at someone the "wrong way" if you want to avoid getting assaulted. I've had to wear sunglasses at night too before.
"How about the fact that human lives are being spent like pennies for the advancement US global hegemony?"
So, how much exactly is a human life worth? I think the answer can be found in this statement of Caitlin's: "Basically the US empire’s strategy is to use Ukrainian bodies like a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive Russian military explosives as possible."
A human life is worth the cost of a sponge, and a cheap sponge at that.
Thanks a lot, US Empire, for devaluing beautiful human beings and using them as sponges to wipe up your messy messes worldwide. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, but I doubt you're capable of feeling guilt and shame at this point in the empire building. Am I right?
Yes - our time, like many historical periods, ultimately comes down to how much "human life" is valued. One could probably chart the decline of US empire by how much human life has declined in value - economically, healthwise - our healthcare system is a corporate extortion scheme - and how wars are the first choice of our corrupt American politicans, not the last.
Perhaps some wars can be justified and are unavoidable - perhaps we had no choice but to fight the Nazis. But this Ukrainian war was clearly avoidable, and there were a number of times the bloodshed could have been stopped. It still can be stopped, but there is no effort at all to stop it by those in power. It is a sure sign of a failed empire, of complete rot of US institutions and rot in the corrupt (senile) power in Washington DC.
Well said. I begin to wonder if the "senility" isn't a so much a bug but a feature of the US Empire... Anything goes wrong (majorly nuclear winter wrong) and the oligarchy can just point their finger at the senile leader in charge and say, "It was all HIS idea!" Sigh.
The "term limit" and "democratic" revolving door mechanisms are designed specifically for that - no responsibility and/or continuity for public faces. The ones the public is supposed to vote for. While in the background the real for-life rulers are free to implement their long-term plans.
The stupidity of the electorate to realize that is astounding.
It's surreal being so close to nuclear war now. Like I'm in some kind of movie. The senility of Joe Biden is clear as day - and yet they are pushing him to be the POTUS for another 4 years.
Maybe life is just a movie?
"Like I'm in some kind of movie." - you can read many accounts of people fully realizing what was going on in 1930s Europe. It turned out to be real.
I read William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" when I was 12 or 13. I was a voracious reader - not as much so now as I used to be. Spend a lot of time writing often abrasive comments on social media. Must be the loneliness. Life goes on, until it doesn't.
If you didn't reread it when you were older then it's of little use. No way a teenager can get into depths of meaning available to grownups with somewhat conscious life experience.
The classics studied in high school are good for getting kids acquainted with the names. They'll have to get to the works much later, when they're older and ready.
Meanwhile, RFK, Jr. opened an Office in South Carolina yesterday and said:
"Kennedy explained that when he is President, he will scale back the war machine, make corporations pay their fair share, and pour the money back into policies that benefit the working people of this country.
He also shared how he will get housing costs down by reining in the corporations and backing up homebuyers and working people."
He is correctly focused and wants to win. Of course I strongly oppose his positions on Israel, Palestine and immigration. Of course, he may "evolve" on all these issues as politicians do. (hint, hint!)
As far as I know, he's the only one talking about housing costs and typing them to corporate greed and the need for government regulation. This alone is huge. He makes one incredibly left analysis and policy commitment an almost a daily basis, yet is being attacked by the so clued US left. Go figure.
bill wolfe: I hope RFK Jr. makes it to the White House if only because he can speak well and is well educated. I'm tired of seeing these old brain-dead seniles on TV.
Vivek's interview by Carlson was epic.
Again I’ll say, his position is diplomatic—a smart choice for his level of power right now. His overall stances and his life’s work has been for justice. He can’t get justice by sitting around having “correct” positions for the incompetent Lefties. They don’t vote anyway. But Jews do and right now Jews in America have a LOT of power and most of them support Israel without so much as a blush. So be strategic: get elected, work with your “enemies” and try to find reasonable solutions. FDR did it. Xi does it. Blacks do it. Most women have to do it. In your face doesn’t work, but people who sit safely behind their computers “sharing” opinions don’t see that. They want purity godammit and they want it now!!! It’s so childish.
Like I said, he wants to win.
Almost everyone I talk to about politics is a right winger or Trumper, but almost all of them support RFK, Jr. Majority are working class, tradespeople, and small business persons.
I even met a couple like that who went so far as to claim that the climate emergency was a hoax. When I simply explained to them that it was NOT a hoax but that the so called "solutions" were designed to protect corporations and stick it to the small guy, they almost jumped out of their shoes agreeing with me! They then went through their issues and they were almost mirror image of RFK, Jr.'s positions, including a visceral hatred of the elites and their arrogance.
The US is on the verge of fascism. The systemic radical change that is in the wind is blowing from the right, not the left. So called leftists and progressives need to learn how to talk to people and work with them.
It amazes me that I, a pretty far left leaning person who is inclined towards polarization of debates, can so easily find common ground with so many right wingers. And it's not just a shared hatred of elites: the underlying material interests can be harmonized in many cases if the focus is on people's material needs instead of cultural and identity issues.
What a great reply and statement of values. I feel exactly the same. I see as much to agree with in Tucker’s work as I do RFK who calls himself a true liberal. And you’re right—the coalition that gets him elected (🫰) will probably not be the middle—they’re too self satisfied and comfortable —but the radicals on either end of the spectrum. I too have gone so far left I’m right. And I will happily dump the received wisdom of the left to find a new way of looking at and approaching the Armageddon we have created here and around the world. Thank you for your post.
I wish Caitlin would not engage electoral politics is such a half assed way, and run down RFK in the process.
I loathe Tucker, but I watch the RFK interview and was again astounded that. Presidential candidate was saying what he said during that incredible interview. I really can't understand how someone with a "left" politics could not appreciate and support that.
One (paranoid?) concern I got from that interview arose with his reference to his dinner with Pompeo and unidentified others. I got a smell of the move by the Liberty League in the 1930's when they had a dinner meeting with Smedley Butler to try to lure him into leading a racist military action to overthrow FDR. I sensed that Pompeo and his dinner buddies may have been seeking RFK to join with Trumpers (in political alliance or violent coup). It's areal possibility. Glad RFK has said he would not join the Trump ticket, but still, you never know what will happen when the shit hits the fan.
that's fascist, not racist. This is a greatly under-reported historical story.
I want someone I believe I can trust more the RFK Jr. and the corrupt democrat party he is running in - despite all his hand waiving that he's a good guy. For me, RFK's profound ignorance regarding Israel - which Chris Hedges laid it all out clearly in a recent substack post: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/robert-f-kennedy-jr-the-israel-lobbys?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=778851&post_id=135969438&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email demonstrates RFK Jr's lack of integrity and a lazy/ignorant awareness of key foreign policy issues a POTUS needs to be aware of when running for office. RFK Jr. is also on record stating free market forces can resolve the climate crisis problem - which is sheer lunacy, right-wing lunacy.
Cornel West is a far better candidate for the Left - and maintains the courage of his convictions while running under a third party. Voting for the lesser of two evils is an immoral, broken belief that no one in their right mind should hold onto at this point. The lesser of two evils is still evil. The accusation of purity tests by those who maintain the "lesser of two evils" paradigm - is an excuse not to take responsibility for corruption - to hide under the sheets and pretend everything is ok. Lesser of Two evils is a false excuse to pretend and relieve your conscience that if you continue to vote for a deeply corrupt party called the Democratic party - you did what you could - when what you're doing is just perpetuating a growing evil, that grows worse every election cycle. It's wishful, infantile thinking that things will magically sooner or later get better by continuing the lesser of two evils scam by a corrupt, ageing senile political party - existing in a corrupt, two party corporate system.
Caitlin today…."Unconditional support for Israel doesn’t just mean supporting apartheid abuses and frequent bombings of Gaza, it means supporting the regular bombing of Syria, the annexation of the Golan Heights, and Israel’s insane warmongering against Iran. Israel is always in a state of war.”
Well, actually it means a lot more than that as well.
For example the Kennedy candidate we have seen of late has thrown in the ‘loyal to America' towel and succumbed to the much needed financial and political support from the US controllers, the “chosen” people over in Tel Aviv. He is not the future for the US and never will be, having thrown in his lot with the Netanyahu brigade. But here is the rub. Israel’s plans are not just as mentioned today. They subscribed to "Eretz Israel" for as long as anyone alive today can remember. It is their only one clear objective and well under way with America’s help, of course. Golan Heights, Syria, Palestine (of course), just three of the current components. It covers the land from the Euphrates River to the Nile, as follows……..part of Egypt, most of Syria, a smaller section of Kuwait, , a large portion of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, a small piece of Turkey and half of Iraq. All in the “Middle East”. Where are the problems today?
You guessed it.
That is what this coming election is all about and with Israel's estimated 400 nuclear warheads, developed with US assistance, together with the ongoing financial and military aid of a totally subservient USA, they’ll do it, too. Statements he has made show that he is now “their” man, as is Biden, as is Da Costa, Trump, Pence and as they will all be. Be assured of that fact.
Now Israel is the real game and the naive expectation for an RFK leadership in ‘exceptional' USA will do nothing but make that task a much easier run for the current feeble incumbent, Biden.
But no US presidential candidate will get to first base without "Eretz Israel" being signed off. 100%. Netanyahu demands it. As for the deaths that are yet to come….who in the USA even gives a damn.
No Presidential candidate, that’s for sure.
Meanwhile: 2 Russian nuclear capable bombers were destroyed deep within Russia today. You begin to wonder when the "other shoe" is going to drop.
War will make corpses of us all.
I don't like RFK, Jr.'s position on capitalism and environmental policy either (I spent my life in that field). But he has done more environmental enforcement against corporate polluters than any big environmental group I am aware of. I accept the contradiction and try to convince him he is wrong and to change. If anything, he always does his homework, keeps an open mind, and is open to change. So I continue the struggle. And I listen to the messages he puts out on issues.
That approach is in no way "the acceptance of the lesser of two evils". It is not incrementalism and reformism. It's not even compromise. It is struggle with integrity, and that's the only way social change comes about.
Of course, I agree far more with Cornel West on the issues. But he is a moral philosopher and academic, not a politician. He doesn't want to win, he wants to educate and uplift and inspire. That's great. He's helping in his way. But please don't confuse that with electoral politics.
And just because a person can distinguish between electoral politics and moral reality or truth does not make that person corrupt or a sellout of someone who settles for the "lesser evil".
You may well be right with regard to Brother Cornel. I'm not so sure about RFK Jr.. But even if you are 100% correct, the guy's running in the Democratic primary, isn't he? They don't really appreciate elections. Do you seriously think there is a single chance they'll make him their appointee? Especially if he's indeed all those things you think he is?
For Christ's sake - are we going to spend YET ANOTHER election arguing over whether its worth it voting for a lesser of two evils party?
I can see why Caitlin doesn't even want to write about the next election shitshow - if it's just going to be a repeat of the last shitshow.
And no, it's not ok what RFK Jr. said about the Palestinians and Israel. Not ok for me. Not ok for many of us who think of ourselves as moral human beings. I cannot on any grounds, support the kind of shit RFK Jr. said - and Chris Hedges spelled it out for him and people who support him. No - I'm not going to look the other way and hold my nose.
Like your comments, Jamenta.
Yes, after advocating on behalf of Palestinians for 40 years, I have been tempted to call it a day on many occasions, knowing that the odds are so against any form of justice ever being seen in that part of the globe. Just look at the feeble UN. My god. What a disgrace. Another US plaything manipulated through the ongoing threats of reducing support for the big NY social club. It once served a purpose to its credit. No longer, or the disgrace that is Palestine and Israel's apartheid would have been corrected by now. By the way....the comparison between South Africa's apartheid and Israel's daily children-killing apartheid will never be known thanks to the Western Press. But shooting young children was not a daily activity in South Africa.
The dirty funders are active in the UN organisation as well, buying support from little Island countries in the Pacific to get their vote. Been going so for decades. US vote, always. Never missed one, ever.
Yak yak yak. The idiocy is to withdraw from the battle then hide in your basement and complain about the sate of the nation. The cherry on top is to pretend to a moral superiority when you haven’t got the guts or the grace affect any change. Pop your cherry already.
No the *idiocy* is that after 4 decades of this immoral "Lesser of Two Evils" bullshit - we still have idiots who fall for it. Still. STILL!
I'm not an idiot, pal. I've got my eyes wide open. I know the DNC and corporate democrats are corrupt. I know corporate finance capitalism and Empire are the problem. I've read Marx and many radical perspectives and analyses. I know we need radical change. But I also understand electoral politics and social change. See above relies.
"But I also understand electoral politics and social change" - translation - I am corrupt, pal. Willing to sell my soul when my vision calls for it.
Yeah - sorry about the idiot I did get very angry and it was responding to Jeano's condescending yak yak yak - I live in a basement bullshit. Like I'm the irresponsible one, and she/he is the grown up. What a load of bs - that I'm the fucking problem, not her Israel cock sucking candidate. Where have I heard that line over and over again - oh yeah, it was Hilly campaign that blamed everyone but herself for her corrupt, democratic sorry ass campaign.
Look, I'm really not going to bring up RFK Jr. anymore. You support him all you want. That's your right as an American. But obviously, you know where I stand on the guy.
These "fighters", my ass. They claim to be principled and yet sell out like the corrupt politicians do at the very first opportunity.
The characters like @bill wolfe should either join politics full time and declare that out loudly, or at least quit pretending they're of the "simple folk". Simple folk don't have to compromise. And if they weren't things could have changed indeed.
That’s such an old criticism of electoral politics, it was part of the Clinton Machine’s switch to republicanism. If you can’t see thru it by now, you’re just willfully ignorant. Moreover, the word idiot comes from Ancient Greece where the people who didn’t vote were called “idiota”. So in fact those who don’t vote are actual idiots. Proven by the fact that those who don’t vote have let the elites, who really do not like people voting, persuade them that it’s smart to get butt hurt over “evil” and throw a tantrum and give up. So not only are you an idiot, you’re a puppet of the elites and a fool to boot.
The only puppet I see here is someone who keeps voting for the Democratic party - and wants to convince me to vote for the same corrupt shit over and over again.
If you vote for the democratic party, you are a political chump.
Evil, pure evil. There’s no other word for it and that also goes for anyone who ignores it and votes for these ghouls.
I think that it is all part of the psychological aspect of maintaining the empire. For example, every citizen is expected to be loyal to the empire and think it is good. That it's actions are good, and has good intentions. The news always portrays the empire in a favorable light. Never had it said it has done anything wrong. That is its purpose, to spew government propaganda. You see these articulate men its suits, elegant sophisticated ladies, and they have connections to everything. So you assume they are credible.
Comedians have become bootlickers, gone are the days of Hicks or Carlin. Why? You wrote about the celebrity inner circle and how bootlickers are elevated and the black sheep are rejected. You said the same thing happens in journalism. You can't cover real journalism and be elevated by a major network due to conflict of interest, interest of the empire can not be compromised.
Remember North Korea yeah, Kim was to be this major scary guy, but then he gets put on the back burner. China and Russia are all the rage. Remember the Iraq war? Now its all about the Ukrainian war, we will forget about them, too. You know, like no one really remember 2014. My point is the news outlets tell us what to think and feel. They tell us what is important...Why? The US empire aims to manufacture our consent and what better way to do that then create stories that support US empire interests.
Canada has just contracted to buy 88 billion dollars (including projected maintenance costs) worth of F35JSF the last of which will not be delivered until 2034.
As we are seeing with this war it is being decided with missiles and drones.
The question has been asked for a long time why are we are building jet fighters costing 100 million per copy when they can be shot down by missiles costing a few thousand dollars?
Will Canada be looking for a cancellation of contract?
I wonder if Ottawa will cancel its contract , especially when our government spending is out of control.
The F22 production was shut down because of huge cost overruns. The F35JSF (costing 1.5 trillion dollars to develop) may never see action because of its high cost, high maintenance costs and the rapidly changing face of war .
Yeah good question. Why are they building super aircraft carriers that cost billions of dollars, when a few hypersonic missiles will blow any ship on the ocean out of the water?
Military doctrine has now evolved to drones and missiles. When will Raytheon and Boeing catch up? Or is it just all about corporate profits? Maybe that's always what it's been about.
We live by myths of Chinese/China aggression: they are our bed-time stories - and we're always asleep or on the point. I especially like the one about Mao's ability to kill and starve millions - while Chiang Kai Shek, that Western lackey, was angelically selling bibles on which he held a monopoly in China. Meanwhile Mao was on 5600 mile 370 day trek to avoid Western backed forces under Chiang, literally walking for his life, but miraculously, he was able to kill/starve millions in the process. Truly wondrous. And plenty more stories just like that.
“….Basically the US empire’s strategy is to use Ukrainian bodies like a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive Russian military explosives as possible….”
Oh that’s just the beginning. The sheep in Europe buying into all of this have not understood yet that their sons and daughters are next in line to be shoved into the Ukrainian meat grinder on behalf of the owners BlackRock, Goldman, Raytheon, Boeing and Co.
That the Polish government are willing should be a clue, given that when this war started Poland was a pariah state for its director authoritarianism - but suddenly Poland is being whitewashed. Well the Polish leaders are rabid nutcases and they will drag all of Europe into this.
Thank you Caitlin🙏